Consumer retail companies have been searching for more efficient ways of loading and delivering products to their customers. Currently, the major distributors of consumer retail products use Direct Store Delivery (DSD) as the method of delivering products from the distributor directly to the retail store, bypassing a retailer's warehouse. In this method, the vendor manages the product from order to shelf. While this method is preferable, there has been little innovation and advancement in the efficiency in the execution of product loading and delivery methods.
Using the beverage industry as an example, most beverage distributors divide their customer orders into two categories, bulk (box trailer) and route (sideload) truck deliveries. Bulk orders are typically for large retail customers who order quantities that would fill a pallet or multiple pallets of mixed SKU's. Bulk accounts typically are large grocery chains or general merchandise stores that have a truck dock area for receiving. Bulk orders are normally discrete picked to pallets, stretch wrapped and loaded in reverse route stop sequence for delivery. The pallets are typically moved into the customer's facility via pallet jack at the receiving docks.
Route orders are generally smaller customer orders like convenient stores, liquor stores or local bars and restaurants. Route orders are typically “batch” picked for a group of customers by package type to pallets and delivered via sideload delivery truck. Each pallet on the sideload truck is comprised of the aggregate quantity of each package and flavor for the “batch” of customer orders on the truck. This means that warehouse personnel “batch” pick the product once in the warehouse and the driver picks the discrete customer orders off of the truck into stacks of products which may fit on a two-wheel hand truck.
In studying sideload drivers in the soft drink industry, on a 16 bay truck, the driver typically handles each case on the truck four (4) times before delivering it. He also opens the overhead sliding bay doors 283 times per day to accomplish the day's deliveries. It has been found that this method causes a number of operation and ergonomic issues including inefficient handling practices and decreased productivity, product damage from handling and weather, inability to meet customer delivery windows, reduced customer service and merchandising time, and poor ergonomic conditions leading to OSHA and workers compensation issues.
These negative operational issues coupled with the effect of the SKU proliferation and the ever changing world of new packaging has had an immense impact on both the order picking and DSD process across many different industries. There is now a desire for a better means of truck loading and delivery to allow distribution facilities to increase productivity and provide an ergonomically friendly work environment for the delivery driver.